Nvidia’s RTX 3080 graphics cards sold out almost immediately after dropping last week. A chunk of them ended up on eBay with some particularly questionable pricing. But it wasn’t just scalpers. Australian computer parts retailer MSY seems to have been price gouging the cards on the platform.
This post was originally published on September 21 at 21:59pm.
The RTX 3080 sold out real fast
When the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 went on sale, social media was flooded with posts from people who missed out. Some didn’t even receive email notifications when it became available.
From the get go Nvidia was aware that scalping and bots were part of the problem. This was evident when wildly priced RTX 3080s began appearing on eBay, with one even allegedly selling for $96,000.
But while dodgy scalpers are to be expected, what you don’t want to see is retailers also taking advantage of a stock shortage to charge exponentially more.
MSY jacked up its price
Pricing of the new RTX 3080 video cards is always going to vary. A big reason of this is due to the variance between versions. For example, a Founders Edition RTX 3080 — the cards sold directly through NVIDIA — retails for $1,139.
MSI’s version of the RTX 3080 is a little different with its own customisations, and naturally it’s a little more expensive. In Australia, the Gaming X Trio RTX 3080 is selling between $1,400 and $1,600. Similar PC hardware sellers like Mwave, PC Case Gear and JW all fall into this price range.
However, the eBay store for M.SPEC gaming has the cards priced at $2,099 — a minimum of $600 more than what most reputable online retailers have been selling them for.
If you look a little closer, M.SPEC Gaming is operated by MSY. It’s website has MSY in the URL and the copyright at the bottom of the homepage is attributed to MSY.
It appears that the MSI RTX 3080 is not for sale on the M.SPEC website, but an MSY button at the top of the homepage takes you to its own online store.
It’s unclear how if or how long MSY sold the RTX 3080 on its own online store for. While MSY has a banner on its home page stating that the RTX 3080 is out of stock, clicking on it doesn’t do anything.
At the time of writing we weren’t able to find a landing page for the video cards. A site search also offers zero results and the NVIDIA pages don’t list the RTX 3080.
Comparatively, all the other retailers mentioned above, and many others here, still have pre-order landing pages for the card, despite being out of stock.
Gizmodo Australia has reached out to MSY to confirm whether it only sold the MSI RTX 3080 video cards via eBay.
What we know for sure is that the RTX 3080 cards were listed on the eBay M.SPEC gaming page for $2,099. And it was listed at this price during a product shortage. The Founders Edition RTX 3080 video cards sold out so quickly that Nvidia actually issued an apology.
“We saw unprecedented demand for the GeForce RTX 3080 at global retailers, including the NVIDIA online store. At 6 a.m. pacific we attempted to push the NVIDIA store live. Despite preparation, the NVIDIA store was inundated with traffic and encountered an error. We were able to resolve the issues and sales began registering normally.”
Gizmodo Australia reached out to MSY but the company didn’t respond in time for publication.
This is not the first time MSY has engaged in dodgy behaviour. Back in 2017 it was fined $750,000 by the ACCC for misleading customers regarding their warranty rights. It was done for the same thing back in 2012, too.